Tulane sophomore Maribel Lopez Porras got another feather in her cap on Wednesday when she was named the Outstanding Feamle Athlete for Greater New Orleans by the Allstate Sugar Bowl and the Greater New Orleans Sports Hall of Fame.

Maribel Lopez Porras

Porras will be recognized, along with the remaining award winners who will be announced later this week, at a banquet on Saturday, July 23 at the Louisiana Superdome. The annual awards are based on achievements for the 2010-11 academic year which runs from July-June.

Porras is a native of Bogota, Colombia and this season, she received honorable mention All-America honors from Golfweek.com and became just the third Green Wave golfer to receive an All-America mention. Porras was named the 2011 Conference USA Golfer of the Year, was selected to the All C-USA and All-Louisiana first teams, named to the All-Region team by the National Golf Coaches Association, was tabbed to the All C-USA Tournament team and was named the C-USA Golfer of the Week on March 2.

Porras became the first Green Wave golfer in school history to qualify as an individual for the NCAA Championships and ranked as high as 18th in the nation. She concluded her second collegiate campaign ranked 37th according to Golfstat.com.

Porras was Tulane's top golfer and played all 30 rounds in nine tournaments and led the squad with a 73.85 stroke average. She produced 12 rounds of par or better, including a season-low 3-under 69, and tallied four top-10 finishes, including three fifth place showings, and had three other finishes inside the top-20.

Off the course, Porras is a double major in political science and international relations and was a member of the Tulane 3.0 Club for both the fall and spring sessions.

The Greater New Orleans Sports Awards Selection Committee, made up of local media members, honors athletes in a wide-range of categories. Following Wednesday’s release of its annual award winners, Thursday will see the announcement of the James J. Corbett Award winners and a pair of Special Award winners, and on Friday, the organization will announce its 2011 inductees for the Greater New Orleans Sports Hall of Fame, as well as the Eddie Robinson Award honoree.

The Corbett Award has honored the top amateur athlete in the state of Louisiana each year since 1967 (since 2000, a male and a female Corbett Award has been distributed). The Robinson Award was instituted two years ago to honor the legendary football coach from Grambling State University; it recognizes an individual who demonstrates the qualities most closely associated with Coach Robinson: outstanding achievement in athletics, academics, sportsmanship and citizenship by maximizing the use of limited resources.